Demystifying Medicine One Week at a Time

GlassHospital is proud to host this week’s Grand Rounds, a compendium of medical-related writing and blogging from around the world. This week’s theme, in honor of the holiday, is CELEBRATION. Here at GH we’re pleased to be celebrating the six month anniversary of our debut.

We have 21 pieces to share with you, including one poem and one photo. This week’s submissions, all celebratory-themed, seemed to cluster into five main categories: Aging gracefully, history & literature, medical drama, health care policy, and good ol’ humor. So pull up a chair, maybe a nice iced coffee, and dig in.

Here we go:

Aging Gracefully

Delia O’Hara, a former Chicago Sun-Times reporter, who blogs at Birth Story, wrote a beautiful post celebrating her older daughter’s graduation, and her own good fortune in being there.

Eve Harris, writing at A Healthy Piece of My Mind, wrote in about her family’s “Cancerversary,” a 20th anniversary remembrance of her mother and how the Internet has changed the ways we gather knowledge.

Dr. Elaine Schattner, who hosted last week’s Grand Rounds on her blog Medical Lessons, submitted a wonderful post about the performances of James Taylor and Carole King together both on television (and later after seeing them in concert at Madison Square Garden). Wearing her doctor’s hat, she can’t help but celebrate Taylor’s apparent success in kicking drug addiction. “Life gets better as you get older,” the music made her think. Amen!

Marie Cooper, blogmaster of Nourish: Living, Laughing, Whining sent in a celebration of her resiliency in the face of multiple sclerosis. Fireworks are loaded with meaning for her as she courageously faces her chronic illness.

Finally in the Aging section, we offer Dr. Kimberly Manning, author of Life at Grady, a blog about her doctoring at Atlanta’s most famous public hospital. This post was sent courtesy of the American College of Physicians publication “ACP Hospitalist.” Poor Dr. Manning thought she was the hippest, coolest attending around. Then an outdated reference blew her cred. All of it. Boy, can I relate to this one…

History & Literature

Some of us liberal-artsy types make it here in Medicine. We often celebrate with our writing. Examples:

Michelle Wood, blogger at Occam Practice Management, submitted an interesting history of physician signers of the Declaration of Independence. Very theme appropriate. Know how many signers were docs? Three. [Correction: Four!]

I was lucky enough to be driving last week around the same time as Dr. Charles, and got to hear the StoryCorps piece on NPR from last week about Lillie Love. Dr. Charles sent in a wonderful post about celebrating life inspired by her story, at his blog The Examining Room of Dr. Charles.

Lastly, though not exactly celebratory, Inside Surgery sent in an interesting tidbit that medical buffs and historians will like: how snake oil earned its reputation–despite purported health benefits!

Medical Drama

In case you aren’t a teenager or don’t have ready access to one (maybe you live in a cave?), you may not know about the Twilight series of books and films that are all the rage. The most recent Twilight film opened over the holiday weekend to hundreds of millions of dollars in box office receipts.

Jackie Fox, a breast cancer survivor who blogs at Dispatch from Second Base, sent in an entirely logical post making the case that fans should celebrate crushes on surgeons, not vampires.

A surgeon himself, bongi sent in a dramatic post celebrating a surgeon’s ability to handle internal bleeding. Hailing from South Africa, we give a nod to bongi for both his nation’s gracious hosting of the World Cup (blow your vuvuzela), and for hosting next week’s Grand Rounds on his blog, other things amanzi.

Dr. Vinny Arora, colleague and medical educator extraordinaire, sent in a brilliantly-themed post illustrating what happens to us poor schnooks who have to work holidays in the hospital. I found her recitation of holiday-themed hospital celebrations and diseases associated with holidays both poignant and funny. She blogs at FutureDocs.

Celebrating (?) Health Care Policy

Policy wonks seem to fall into different camps on health care reform: Either it’s a great leap forward for our nation, or it’s the beginning of the end. This week’s pundits sent in posts about various aspects of health care policy, including reform.

Dr. James Baker, a psychiatrist writing at Mental Notes, celebrates health care reform by asking the age old question of whether health care is a right or a privilege.

Dr. Rich, nom de bloggeur of The Covert Rationing Blog, celebrates the unending fascination with the medical TV drama House, as well as our “Great American Experiment” in his post.

Chris Langston, program director at the John A. Hartford Foundation, celebrates a recent spate of NY Times coverage of geriatrics issues in their multi-authored blog with the great name Health AGEenda.

Hank Stern of InsureBlog, not a fan of ObamaCare, suggests that celebration over the recent delay in Medicare fee cuts for doctors is misplaced, since dealing with the issue has merely been postponed.

Ryan DuBosar, new media guru and blogger at the American College of Physicians, sent in a post from the ACP Internist that could give internists reason to celebrate: a new way of expressing patients’ end-of-life preferences in nursing home orders that gets much higher uptake from doctors and patients.

Finally, the Happy Hospitalist (of the eponymous blog) sent us this pithy little celebratory post about early July in a teaching hospital.

Humor, or Going out with a Bang

Reason to Celebrate?

Dr. Grumpy, one of the most prolific and funny bloggers in the land, sent in the photo at right, noting the odd juxtaposition between the celebrants (hello, theme!) and the headline below.

He also offered up a post about a bit too much celebrating during Christmas, posted over at his blog Dr. Grumpy in the House. (Not for the prudish.)

Finally, Dr. Rob Lamberts of Musings of a Distractible Mind sent me a recent post of his, answering, among other things, the eternal question of whether it’s Health Care or Healthcare. Well, we’re GlassHospital. Not Glass Hospital. What do you think?

10 Comments

Thank you so much for including my Twilight-themed blog post! I had a lot of fun with that one.

You gathered a great collection with a lot of variety–I can’t wait to read them!!!!

P.S. I will be hosting Grand Rounds on August 10th so please feel free to submit. I’ll post details in a couple of weeks, including a theme if I come up with one. I’m leaning toward either dr/pt communication or change.

Oh dear, oh dear: I’m afraid I’ve misled the GlassHospital (hopefully nothing shatters!) Thanks for putting up my post about our Founding Physicians, but the physicians I wrote about were members of the Constiutional Convention (and only two signed, as one had to gome to treat a sick family member). There were actually four physicians who signed the Declaration of Independence: Dr. Josiah Bartlett (New Hampshire), Dr. Lyman Hall (Georgia), Dr. Benjamin Rush (Pennsylvania), and Dr. Matthew Thornton (New Hampshire). Hmm, perhaps I should write about them next, just to even things out.

Regardless, they were all important and worthy of celebration. Thanks for a fun Grand Round, it was a great challenge to write for this theme. I hope to read some of these other celebratory posts today.

But I’m kinda wondering why my Housecalls post (discussing – and not in a celebratory fashion – the new requirements for Board Re-Certification), submitted over the weekend, was not included in your Heath Care Policy section (maybe it got lost in the mail?).

Continuing a discussion going on at Kevin’s, if social media is EVER going to be a good vehicle for real change in medicine, it would be nice if ALL of the voices got heard. And some of us are tired of being marginalized/edited out because what we’re saying isn’t exactly what the powers-that-be want us to be saying.

Really great article – I was working on a similar article which I will probably still take a shot at, but from a slightly different angle. Thanks for sharing this with your readers…Obviously a lot of others appreciate it too!